Titan's Sideways Cipher

This processed image from Cassini's Aug. 22, 2005, flyby of Titan reveals mid-latitudes on the moon's Saturn-facing side. This region has been imaged previously by Cassini, although the recent approach has improved the moderate-resolution coverage of the area.

Provisional names recently have been applied to a number of features on Titan. Features within the region seen here -- long known informally as the H -- now have names like Tsegihi, Aztlan and Quivira.

The bright 215-kilometer-wide (134-mile) feature provisionally named "Bazaruto Facula" is clearly visible right of center, with its dark, unnamed 80-kilometer-wide (50-mile) crater at its center.

This view was acquired with the wide-angle camera at a distance of approximately 159,000 kilometers (99,000 miles) from Titan using a spectral filter centered on infrared wavelengths at 939 nanometers. The image scale is 9 kilometers (6 miles) per pixel. Previous observations indicate that, due to Titan's thick, hazy atmosphere, the sizes of surface features that can be resolved are a few times larger than the actual pixel scale.

For other views of this terrain on Titan, see PIA06220, PIA06222 and PIA06227.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage http://ciclops.org.